Wait a minute Jamoke. Now I have no love loss about you but are you telling me that Alpha Male and OneBadMutha are the same person? Because if they are and you find this out for a fact, I will personally beat the crap out of him myself.

You and I still have unfinished business too. Don't forget to sign the papers.

Getting back to the topic since my quote led it off, I don't believe that rank can be withdrawn as long as it was properly earned. I do think it would be better for the martial arts community if there was a differentiation between a instructors certificate and black belt rank. That way the former would represent the instructors judgment of his students ability to teach and whether they were teaching the art as it was passed down to them. If wonder student was caught molesting his childrens class or totally screwing up the art while saying that they were teaching their master's style, then their teacher could say, hey I no longer consider you fit or trustworthy to pass on the art and I'm withdrawing my approval for you teaching it. Granted that this would also get political but at least it would be a more specific sanction as verses the annulment approach "hey that rank never happened" Interestingly there have been cases where martial artists have broken away from their previous art because they knew that they could no longer teach with their modifications and still call their approach "senior master's budo ryu". In John Corcoran and Emil Farkas's book "The Original Martial Arts Encyclopedia" (p. 317) it appears Al Dacascos did this when he left kajukenbo to create won hop kuen do.

As mentioned earlier my school does have separate teaching certifacation. Not all of our black belts are considered instructors, and those that are go through special training to make them better teachers.

Since you are lawyer, maybe you can answer this quesiton? How much of a style can me "owned". Consider this example:

I train under a instructor who creates his own original style, complete with set curriculm. I move across the country and after some time decide to open a school of my own. How similar can the stuff I teach be? Does simply changing the name of the art, techniques, and katas absolve me of liability or can someone copywrite indivual or sequences of movements?

There is no such thing as trademarking "karate techniques"! Hell a karate schools biggest competition is teaching a student for years then they go and open on the other side of town and teach the exact same thing. Nothing you can do about it.

Say you call your style "The Punisher Karate Style", you may have a case if they use that name, but if it's not trade marked you may have a problem.

But you can teach exactly what you have learned if you wish, and there is NOTHING they can do about it.